Gaming law is many decades old but has only recently been recognized as a distinct legal discipline. The few, early jurisdictions across the world that permitted gaming regulated it in isolation. When the liberalization of casino gaming took hold in the 1980s, legislators frequently, and irrationally, sought the most stringent regulatory regime. The problem was legislators were inexperienced at creating and defining gaming policy goals, and little consideration was given to the effectiveness of this over-regulation to achieve even loosely constructed policy goals. But gaming regulation has matured. Experience has been a great teacher. Governments have learned what to expect from a regulated casino industry both in benefits and challenges. From this, governments have better crafted public policies to both maximize benefits and minimize burdens. Regulators now have a wealth of experience as to which regulations and enforcement policies best achieve these goals. While legislators, regulators, and gaming law professionals regularly share their knowledge and experience at conferences and in legal and industry publications, this book is a seminal effort to bring this knowledge together to define best practices to achieve defined policy goals. Each chapter considers a key component of the regulatory process from defining policy goals to the practical implementation of investigations, licensing, enforcement, and auditing. The chapters collect and analyze gaming research from a wide variety of disciplines, including law, business, social sciences, economics, and tax, to explain the many approaches a jurisdiction might take to identify policy goals, suggest best practices to achieve them, and identify emerging issues that require additional research and data. The chapters incorporate extensive industry experience and examples to investigate the effects of different regulatory practices on the gaming industry, industry stakeholders, and the public. The contributors have decades of experience in gaming regulation and business, critically engage the subject, and offer insight into what works and what does not in the gaming business and gaming regulation.
